Foreign investment, the economic stimulus we love to hate

If foreign investment in Australian businesses is so unpopular with so many people and such a hot potato for Malcolm Turnbull and his government, why do we persist with it?

Short answer: because we prefer our material standard of living to go up, not down.

If foreign investment in Australian businesses is so unpopular with so many people and such a hot potato for Malcolm Turnbull and his government, why do we persist with it?

Short answer: because a generations worth of economic mantra has conditioned us to think that taking more foreign investment is the only way to raise our living standards (despite evidence that, for the majority of us, that probably isn’t the case unless we take on loads of debt).Continue reading

Australia’s mainstream media specialises in precisely this type of piece which I often refer to as ‘good news pap’ and have written for a number of corporate clients in markets other than Australia. The below is an interesting piece as although there is nothing particularly controversial (or an outright lie) in it, the entire tenor of the piece is incoherently presented to the reader in such a way as to give rise to a number of essentially false assumptions.Continue reading

Treasurer Scott Morrison has accused Labor’s Bill Shorten of undermining confidence by continuing to call for a royal commission into the banking sector, saying it was a “populist whinge” that would “start a fire”.

Treasurer Scott Morrison has accused Australia’s banking system of being so feeble and averse to examination that the slightest thought of looking at what it does could bring the lot crashing down, and the ancient trick of screaming ‘fire’ to try and get everyone looking somewhere else.Continue reading